Preparing for the Future – a Publisher’s Perspective

Strictly Legal: Toeing the Copyright LineCliff Morgan, John Wiley & Sons LtdBL, 7 June 2005

Plan of Presentation The situation with print Offline electronic publications Online electronic publications Specific activity of the JCLD eJWG

pilot project A plea for understanding

Libraries are Great “Libraries gave us power” (Manic

Street Preachers “A Design for Life”) A national archive of published

literature is a Good Thing A literate and knowledge-hungry

population is good for publishers As long as they can still earn a buck

With Print… We understand the rules – established in

1911 (Copyright Act) “Best version”, whether hand-tooled

vellum, cloth, printed-paper case, or paperback

Published (= made available) in the UK Some clear exemptions: internal reports,

exam papers, timetables, calendars and posters, appointment diaries

Deposit with the BL within one month of publication

Deposit with one of the other 5 (incl. Trinity College, Dublin) if requested within 12 months of publication by the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries (formerly the Copyright Libraries Agency)

At the Publisher’s Cost Three elements to the costs (assuming no

loss-of-sale cost): Unit cost of book, i.e. direct external costs

incurred in making book (copy-ed, typesetting, proofreading, indexing, PPB (print, paper and bind))

Doesn’t include direct internal costs (e.g. Editorial and Production staff), indirect internal (sales, marketing, finance, IT, etc.), author royalties, or profit

That is, the unit cost is not the price of the book

Other external costs incurred: post and packing

Specific internal costs: managing the legal deposit program, not just for Wiley product but for all of our Distribution customers (Yale, Harvard, Princeton, California, Columbia, Chicago, Johns Hopkins UPs; MIT Press; Norton; O’Reilly)

For our last fiscal year, provision of legal deposit copies cost us £50k in external costs (cf £130k year before) (full comps F04 £720k, F05 £670k, thus from 18% to 7%)

How Come? Our legal deposit process was

triggered by ISBN That is, 1 ISBN = 1 legal deposit

copy Therefore, we were duplicating for

dual editions and multivolume sets Only need to deposit “best copy” (=

best format), not all formats

Offline Electronic Publications That is, CD-ROMs, DVDs (and non-

electronic non-print such as videos, cassettes, plus also “non-print” such as microform)

Not online publications, nor continuously updated databases, nor computer software and games

Voluntary code of practice (between libraries, PA, ALPSP and PPA) agreed in September 1999, applied from 4/1/00

Voluntary Code Deposit not required if publication

“substantially duplicates the content of a print publication” that has already been deposited

Deposited “in the form in which they are made available to the public, with any associated software, manuals, and other material”

PC format preferred in case of multiple

No need to deposit offline publication until 12 copies have been sold in the UK

(6 copies if microform) Material can only be used for doc del

or ILL under explicit licence from publisher (with fees and royalties)

Deposit library able to copy on to other medium for preservation purposes only (I.e. not for user access)

Unless expressly forbidden by publisher If copied, original publication’s “identity

and integrity” to be maintained Assumed that code for online would

follow, but recognized that would be complex – for libraries not just publishers

Activity According to evidence given to

Select Committee: For “hand-held electronic

publications” (seems to mean offline electronic), possibly 75% deposited

For online (mainly journals), 45-50% - but of course these were excluded from Code

Online Electronic Publications Subject of new Act (the Legal

Deposit Libraries Act 2003)) Established general principle Details will be in Regulations –

involving stakeholders JCLD set up three subcommittees –

eJournals, territoriality, and review of offline code

eJournals WG eJournals product type prioritised by

libraries Excludes e-books, major reference

works, etc. – for pragmatic reasons Prepare the ground for the

Regulations Members: BL, CUL, NLW; PA, ALPSP,

STM

Territoriality Not part of my group, but issues are

critical – defining “UK” publication in an online environment

Will everything have to be deposited in every country in which it is available via a desktop?

Scope Issues Websites – constantly updated:

snapshots in time? Blogs – are these published? Some

are equivalent to newsletters, others to personal diaries

High-ticket, low-sale items? IRs – are they publishers? Duplicate

versions?

eJ WG Pilot Study About 20 publishers participating Include large commercial (Elsevier; T&F;

Wiley; LWW), large uni presses and society (OUP; CUP; RSC; IoPP); OA (BMC); and small (Maney; The Way; IFIS; etc.)

Limit of 10 titles or so per publisher “Test to destruction” – go for difficult Some issues: formats, 3rd party software,

metadata, digital manifests

Simon Inger (Scholarly Information Strategies) appointed as project manager

Simon visiting every participating publisher

Project will run for another year/18 months

Morgan’s Mantra Deposit is about description and delivery

– this is what we’ve published, and this is how we get it to you

Not about convergence and conversion Publishers cannot take on costs of

converting electronic material purely for the purpose of deposit

We can’t solve the rather intractable long-term preservation issues by means of deposit protocols

Access Mirror the print legal deposit –

access is limited to reading room access

Not a dark archive, but not freely available to all and sundry either

Don’t Make It Too Onerous BL deals with 8000 publishers – they

all need to deposit And their main focus will always be

publishing in (print and electronic) formats that they think the punter will buy – not in turning themselves inside out to satisfy complex preservation requirements